As to the various callings of life, Christianity
gives the instruction: "Let each man abide in that calling wherein he
was called."6156151 Cor. 7:20.15
It forbids no respectable pursuit, and only requires that it be
followed in a new spirit to the glory of God and the benefit of men.
This is one proof of its universal application—its
power to enter into all the relations of human life and into all
branches of society, under all forms of government. This is beautifully
presented by the unknown author of the Epistle to Diognetus. Tertullian protests to the heathens:616616 Apol. c. 42.16 "We
are no Brahmins nor Indian gymnosophists, no hermits, no exiles from
life.617617 Exules vitae.17 We are
mindful of the thanks we owe to God, our Lord and Creator; we despise
not the enjoyment of his works; we only temper it, that we may avoid
excess and abuse. We dwell, therefore, with you in this world, not
without markets and fairs, not without baths, inns, shops, and every
kind of intercourse. We carry on commerce and war,618618 "Militamus," which
proves that many Christians served in the army.18 agriculture and trade with you.
We take part in your pursuits, and give our labor for your use."

But there were at that time some callings which
either ministered solely to sinful gratification, like that, of the
stage-player, or were intimately connected with the prevailing
idolatry, like the manufacture, decoration, and sale of mythological
images and symbols, the divination of astrologers, and all species of
magic. These callings were strictly forbidden in the church, and must
be renounced by the candidate for baptism. Other occupations, which
were necessary indeed, but commonly perverted by the heathens to
fraudulent purposes—inn-keeping, for
example—were elevated by the Christian spirit.
Theodotus at Ancyra made his house a refuge for the Christians and a
place of prayer in the Diocletian persecution, in which he himself
suffered martyrdom.

In regard to military and civil offices under the
heathen government, opinion was divided. Some, on the authority of such
passages as Matt. 5:39
and 26:52,
condemned all war as unchristian and immoral; anticipating the views of
the Mennonites and Friends. Others appealed to the good centurion of
Capernaum and Cornelius of Caesarea, and held the military life
consistent with a Christian profession. The tradition of the legio
fulminatrix indicates that there were Christian soldiers in the Roman
armies under Marcus Aurelius, and at the time
of Diocletian the number of Christians at the court and in civil office
was very considerable.

But in general the Christians of those days, with
their lively sense of foreignness to this world, and their longing for
the heavenly home, or the millennial reign of Christ, were averse to
high office in a heathen state. Tertullian
expressly says, that nothing was more alien to them than politics.619619 Apol. c. 38: "Nec
ulla res aliena magis quam publica."19 Their
conscience required them to abstain scrupulously from all idolatrous
usages, sacrifices, libations, and flatteries connected with public
offices; and this requisition must have come into frequent collision
with their duties to the state, so long as the state remained heathen.
They honored the emperor as appointed to earthly government by God, and
as standing nearest of all men to him in power; and they paid their
taxes, as Justin Martyr expressly states,
with exemplary faithfulness. But their obedience ceased whenever the
emperor, as he frequently did, demanded of them idolatrous acts. Tertullian thought that the empire would last till
the end of the world,—then supposed to be near at
hand—and would be irreconcilable with the Christian
profession. Against the idolatrous worship of the emperor he protests
with Christian boldness: "Augustus, the founder of the empire, would
never be called Lord; for this is a surname of God. Yet I will freely
call the emperor so, only not in the place of God. Otherwise I am free
from him; for I have only one Lord, the almighty and eternal God, who
also is the emperor’s Lord .... Far be it from me to
call the emperor God, which is not only the most shameful, but the most
pernicious flattery."

The comparative indifference and partial aversion
of the Christians to the affairs of the state, to civil legislation and
administration exposed them to the frequent reproach and contempt of
the heathens. Their want of patriotism was partly the result of their
superior devotion to the church as their country, partly of their
situation in a hostile world. It must not be attributed to an "indolent
or criminal disregard for the public welfare" (as Gibbon intimates),
but chiefly to their just abhorrence of the innumerable idolatrous
rites connected with the public and private life of the heathens. While
they refused to incur the guilt of idolatry, they fervently and
regularly prayed for the emperor and the state, their enemies and
persecutors.620620 See the prayer for
rulers in the newly discovered portions of the Epistle of Clement of Rome, quoted in § 66, above.20
They were the most peaceful subjects, and during this long period of
almost constant provocation, abuse, and persecutions, they never took
part in those frequent insurrections and rebellions which weakened and
undermined the empire. They renovated society from within, by revealing
in their lives as well as in their doctrine a higher order of private
and public virtue, and thus proved themselves patriots in the best
sense of the word.

The patriotism of ancient Greece and republican
Rome, while it commands our admiration by the heroic devotion and
sacrifice to the country, was after all an extended selfishness, and
based upon the absolutism of the State and the disregard of the rights
of the individual citizen and the foreigner. It was undermined by
causes independent of Christianity. The amalgamation of different
nationalities in the empire extinguished sectionalism and exclusivism,
and opened the wide view of a universal humanity. Stoicism gave this
cosmopolitan sentiment a philosophical and ethical expression in the
writings of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus
Aurelius. Terence embodied it in his famous line: "Homo sum:
humani nihil a me alienum puto." But Christianity first taught the
fatherhood of God, the redemption by Christ, the common brotherhood of
believers, the duty of charity for all men made in the image of God. It
is true that monasticism, which began to develop itself already in the
third century, nursed indifference to the state and even to the family,
and substituted the total abandonment of the world for its reformation
and transformation. It withdrew a vast amount of moral energy and
enthusiasm from the city to the desert, and left Roman society to
starvation and consumption. But it preserved and nursed in solitude the
heroism of self-denial and consecration, which, in the collapse of the
Roman empire, became a converting power of the barbarian conquerors,
and laid the foundation for a new and better civilization. The decline
and fall of the Roman empire was inevitable; Christianity prolonged its
life in the East, and diminished the catastrophe of its collapse in the
West, by converting and humanizing the barbarian conquerors.621621 Gibbon, ch. 36,
admits this in part. "If the decline of the Roman empire was hastened
by the conversion of Constantine, the victorious religion broke the
violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious temper of the
conquerors." Milman says of the Church: "If treacherous(?) to the
interests of the Roman empire, it was true to those of mankind" (III.
48). Lecky (II. 153) says: "It is impossible to deny that the Christian
priesthood contributed materially both by their charity and by their
arbitration, to mitigate the calamities that accompanied the
dissolution of the empire; and it is equally impossible to doubt that
their political attitude greatly increased their power for good.
Standing between the conflicting form, almost indifferent to the issue,
and notoriously exempt from the passions of the combat, they obtained
with the conqueror, and used for the benefit of the conquered, a degree
of influence they would never have possessed had they been regarded as
Roman patriots."21 St.
Augustin pointed to the remarkable fact that
amid the horrors of the sack of Rome by the Goths, "the churches of the
apostles and the crypts of the martyrs were sanctuaries for all who
fled to them, whether Christian or pagan," and "saved the lives of
multitudes who impute to Christ the ills that have befallen their
city."622622 De Civ. Dei. l.c.
1.22

620 See the prayer for
rulers in the newly discovered portions of the Epistle of Clement of Rome, quoted in § 66, above.

621 Gibbon, ch. 36,
admits this in part. "If the decline of the Roman empire was hastened
by the conversion of Constantine, the victorious religion broke the
violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious temper of the
conquerors." Milman says of the Church: "If treacherous(?) to the
interests of the Roman empire, it was true to those of mankind" (III.
48). Lecky (II. 153) says: "It is impossible to deny that the Christian
priesthood contributed materially both by their charity and by their
arbitration, to mitigate the calamities that accompanied the
dissolution of the empire; and it is equally impossible to doubt that
their political attitude greatly increased their power for good.
Standing between the conflicting form, almost indifferent to the issue,
and notoriously exempt from the passions of the combat, they obtained
with the conqueror, and used for the benefit of the conquered, a degree
of influence they would never have possessed had they been regarded as
Roman patriots."